


Bad Blood

by scullywolf



Series: TXF: Scenes in Between [109]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Banter, F/M, Gen, Humor, MSR, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-29
Updated: 2015-11-29
Packaged: 2018-05-03 21:40:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5307803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullywolf/pseuds/scullywolf





	Bad Blood

_“But… he was dead.”_  
_“I noticed that.”_  
_“With a stake through his heart.”_  
_“I noticed that, too.”_

“W-well,” she sputtered, “someone else must have attacked the coroner and stolen the body, then.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Really? You think that’s the most logical explanation here?”

“I don’t… of course it is! You can’t possibly be claiming that a man, confirmed dead with a stake through his heart, after a day in cold storage, somehow came back to life and attacked the coroner.”

“I can if he’s a vampire,” he said, “if the only thing keeping his undead heart from starting up again is a piece of wood physically getting in the way. Pull it out, and…”

He shrugged, palms up, and she shook her head, exasperated.

“That makes absolutely no sense.” She looked, pointedly, at Skinner’s closed office door. “But in any event, we need to get back to Chaney.”

Mulder nodded, adding under his breath, “Yee-haw.”

***

Their job truly did entail a ridiculous amount of travel, sometimes. They’d only just returned to Washington that morning, and here they were, not six hours later, back at the airport and waiting to board a flight right back to Dallas. If Scully had been afraid of flying when she started this job, she’d have long since been cured of it by now.

“I wonder if Ronnie Strickland’s family are all vampires,” Mulder said. “Most vampirism is, of course, regarded like a contagion, where a person becomes a vampire only if he is bitten by someone else who is already a vampire. But there is some evidence for a theory of hereditary vampirism as well, so it may be worth looking into.”

“Mulder, please stop saying ‘vampire’ in the middle of the airport.”

“Oh, nobody’s listening anyway. Don’t you think it’s worth investigating, though? I mean, if they _knew_ that he’d come back to life... or undead...ness… after the stake was removed, because they themselves are also vam--” She shot him a look, and he cut himself off. “If they’re like him. Seems pretty gutsy to try and sue us if they realized his fully dead condition was only temporary, doesn’t it?”

“Pretty gutsy or extremely unlikely? We still don’t have any evidence this isn’t just a body-snatching. None of the information we’ve received indicates in any way that Ronnie Strickland is not still dead.”

Anything he might have said in response was interrupted by the flight boarding announcement. As was often the case when they showed up at the airport and booked tickets at the counter, they were not seated together. This was a good thing because it provided Scully with a reprieve from having Mulder babble in her ear about vampires for the entire flight.

It was less of a good thing because instead, she got stuck in a middle seat between two very loud and enthusiastic Texans who had no apparent understanding of the concept of personal space. For the better part of an hour, she was regaled with more stories of cattle ranching and football than she ever needed to hear, and the two men spent another twenty minutes loudly arguing about barbeque recipes over the top of her. 

The third time her thigh was brushed, no matter how much it seemed like it might have been accidental, she excused herself, awkwardly climbed over the legs of her seat neighbor, and made her way up the aisle to the lavatory. She passed Mulder on her way; he was, similarly, crammed into a middle seat, but he had a little old lady on one side of him, quietly knitting, and a teenaged boy listening to a Walkman on the other side. Mulder himself was dozing.

She finished in the restroom, and on the way back to her seat, she stopped and tapped her partner on the shoulder. He stirred, rubbing his face, and looked up at her, blinking. 

“Everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine, but would you switch seats with me? I think the gentlemen in my row would love to hear each and every one of your theories with regard to Ronnie Strickland.”

He narrowed his eyes, and she watched him work out the message between the lines, as it were. Slowly, he nodded, then unbuckled his seatbelt and stood, making his way to the aisle. She gestured toward her empty seat a few rows up, and he nodded again.

“Thanks, partner.”

“Don’t mention it.”

With a grateful sigh, she settled into Mulder’s seat for a blissfully quiet remainder of the flight.


End file.
